Database behemoth Oracle continued its shopping spree yesterday when it bought Oblix, a privately-owned security firm, for an undisclosed amount.

Oblix provides companies with secure identity and Single Sign-On services. These are increasingly used by businesses to guarantee the identity of people accessing corporate networks over the web.

Oblix products COREid, COREsv and SHAREid will continue to be available as individual products. But Oracle is keen to include the best features into its own identity management products.

Phil Wainewright, chief analyst at Loosely Coupled, analysts specialising in Service Oriented Architecture, said: “The acquisition plugs gaping holes in Oracle’s SOA line-up. It has market-leading web services orchestration technology after its acquisition last year of specialist BPEL vendor Collaxa, and of course it has one of the leading application server platforms. But there’s been nothing in between.

"Its directory services product, like much Oracle technology, is fine for pure Oracle shops. But after completing the PeopleSoft transaction, Oracle faces big identity federation and policy management challenges across a swathe of its newly acquired customer base. The Oblix acquisition is a remarkably good fit for those gaps in the Oracle strategy."

Wainewright added that the big question was whether Oracle continues with Oblix's development plans for 2005.

Oblix president and chief executive Gordon Eubanks, who used to run Symantec, is not part of the deal. He is leaving the firm to pursue "personal and new interests", according to ZDNet.

More details on Oblix.com here.®

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